


Three-Quarters Baked

by orphan_account



Category: Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Genre: Almost Domestic, Community: picfor1000, F/M, Incest, New Year's Resolutions 2012, The Pairing Is the Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation: Valentine concocts cookies and Peter concocts plans, but these are not at all distinct things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three-Quarters Baked

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivynights (incantatem)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/incantatem/gifts).



Valentine had her pan full when Peter returned from the lake. For a moment she saw the sun-warmed modesty that adults preferred to see, and then the light resolved itself into pieces of Peter, his long eyelashes and straightened brows, the eyes beneath narrowed and inquisitive. For seconds they said nothing. Peter, towel still wet over his shoulder, looked at the dough. Under his gaze the chocolate chips seemed to recreate the strategic map in his room, and Valentine almost wanted to feed him their enterprise. She'd make him queasy with the insane enormity of it.

She picked up a lump of cookie and tossed. It flew toward his nose. Peter watched the trajectory and caught it on his tongue instead, threw his head back and grinned. "Valentine, you boring old fart."

"Hello, you."

"Hm?" He stepped behind her to draw over her throat; she tipped her head back and let him leave his hands there until he had looked his fill of the counter. "You may fool Mother, dear sister. Not me," he said. His chocolate-smeared mouth remained a familiar inch from her swallowing.

"I'm baking." She walked away to put the pan in the oven. 

"You're supposed to be working on Demosthenes."

"This is work. More important work than swimming."

"I think Locke is fond of the word 'bullshit'."

"Hyuk," she said. She sat down. "Go write some more, then."

"I'd rather be with you, my Valentine." There was no quaver, but she heard the kind of half-lie that usually satisfied Peter's teachers. Sorry, I'm just so tired today, he would say, when he was thinking of their bodies molding a boneless cup in their sheets. I haven't slept well lately. The teachers would tell him he should relax. And Peter would, would cut down on his farces in trigonometry and write instead about the intersection of 4-space math and Russian aggression while counseling absolutely nothing. No changes, status quo ante bellum as he plotted the war himself. "Can I be a housewife too?" 

She slapped away his attempt at more dough. "I thought you wanted to discuss what'll happen to Poland when you came back."

He laughed. "The Warsaw Pact? Valentine, we are the future of the Warsaw Pact. The world."

"A girl making snacks for children and a boy who still finds something funny in squirrels."

"Everyone is something different when hell comes."

Peter, are you going to bring hell on us? "Dunno about you, but I don't want to eat in hell," she said. "I don't think they serve you tasty things there."

"I'm hungry," he said, and let his wrists shake. "Feed me?"

"You said I could do more things for myself."

"I meant you could stop asking me to do them." He twisted her head so she had to glance into his glorious face and away. "But you'll do things for me, won't you?"

"You have a nasty habit of trying to take more than you're owed."

"So you do owe me something!" His delight propped up his cheekbones. Peter was beautiful when happy. Ender had avoided Peter when he was beautiful, and Valentine had gone to intercede until even with Ender gone it was easy to lean into Peter. He hugged her as if startled. She turned her chair to ease the awkwardness of the position. "You never admit that."

"Because it's not true."

"You just admitted it," he said. His hands made a movement. "So what do you owe me?"

You think you're doing well, Valentine thought. That you pass light-hearted, joking. But I know everything your hands can do, Peter, and when you try to wrap them around my neck I know what quivering is real.

"Some baked goods," she said. "The thing you hid in the closet? I added some of that, by the way. When you get your stomachache, don't say I didn't pay you back for those brownies last month." I spent a long time practicing on you, Peter, so anything you can deduce about me I can also deduce about you. I can joke just as well.

The thoughtful look ebbed out of his face. Valentine was reminded of two nations about to ally, uncoupled by someone removing the parley flag, and the part of her that was Demosthenes began outlining polemics before she could stop it. Shut up, she thought to that bit of herself, you're not real. 

She looked at him steadily. Even when he pressed his palms higher, so she had to expose all of her throat to his glare, she refused to turn. He could crush her vocal cords in less time than it would take her to call out, but Peter knew his limits with her. With her pulse fast under his hands he still bowed first.

"Sister," he said, with the smile that made ordinary people of all ages and sexes melt, "are you angry with me?"

It was a smile Valentine had trained herself to bear. She shrugged on reflex.

The I.F. had its neat categories. But Ender, Ender was one who would truly sacrifice everything for what he loved. She had embraced more of Peter than they knew. The girl who at three alternately punched Peter and cried in his lap as he beat her back was not the Valentine who rolled each chocolate chip around her mouth as she ate. 

She closed her fists. The columns could wait, the kitchen too, and all the things they never said to each other aloud. Valentine was obscurely pleased that the pans remained messy, that someone had gone through the sweets and flour in a flurry of stress baking but was too valuable to mop up the result herself. As Ender, hours into space and half a decade away, kissed a Valentine in a mirror the other Valentine bent forward. She pushed Peter until his fingers dug into the soft space under her chin.

"Never, _dear_ brother," she said, and discovered that her sugar lingered yet on his tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> NYR 2012. Also a fill for [my prompt](http://www.flickr.com/photos/alicespix/2675356132/lightbox/) from [the picfor1000 challenge](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com).  
> Ivynights, I wasn't sure from your prompt if you were requesting explicit fic, and I apologize if I misunderstood you!
> 
> All kinds of feedback are welcome and appreciated.


End file.
